General elections in Pakistan were scheduled to be held in November this year, 90 days after the National Assembly’s dissolution on August 9, 2023. However, the outgoing government defended its move to delimit electoral constituencies after the approval of the 2023 population census results, which may delay the nationwide general election in the stipulated period.
Meanwhile, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) officially declared on September 19, 2023, that the general elections will be held in the last week of January 2024. This announcement followed a series of delays in the election timeline. The elections were postponed due to the early exit of the Shahbaz Sharif government and the necessity for a comprehensive census.
Analysts opine that the election commission amid mounting pressure from political parties and the international community decided to hold timely and fair elections in the country.
Pakistan is currently being run by a caretaker government under interim Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar that is meant to oversee general elections.
Some political parties such as Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), in their respective meetings with the ECP, have categorically demanded the commission to make sure that the general elections are held within the 90-day constitutionally mandated period (November).
Nevertheless, it is essential to create public awareness about the importance of delimitation before general elections are held in Pakistan. Even legally and morally, delimitation is imperative to provide fair and equal representation to all citizens.
Delimitation is the process of defining and redrawing the boundaries of electoral constituencies in a country. This is typically done to ensure that each constituency has a roughly equal number of eligible voters, thus promoting the democratic principle of “one person, one vote.”
Since births, deaths, migration, urbanisation and other natural factors create disproportion in the population over time, therefore, a fresh delimitation is required to be conducted prior to the general elections. This helps prevent underrepresentation or overrepresentation of specific areas or demographics, which could lead to unfair election outcomes.
As regards the purpose of delimitation, ECP generally forms Delimitation Committees to divide electoral areas into constituencies of equal population (variation shall not exceed 10%). Since ECP is an electoral watchdog and not a statistical centre, it must rely on the final report of the last census conducted by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics.
Distribution of population in geographically compact areas, physical features, existing boundaries of administrative units, facilities of communication, public convenience and other cognate factors are taken into consideration to ensure homogeneity in the creation of constituencies. Notably, several entities filed writ petitions in the courts and before the ECP in connection with the demarcation of the constituencies prior to the elections.
For instance, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) has already clarified that polls without census are unacceptable, and wanted “immediate elections”, but also believed that the Constitution and the law do not allow holding elections without fresh delimitation, once a new population census has been notified. It also filed a petition in the Sindh High Court in this respect. MQM-P Convener Dr Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui stated: “The Constitution and the law do not permit elections without new voter lists [once results of a new census are published]”.
Apparently referring to the PPP, the MQM-P leader indicated that those who are advocating for elections on the old constituency boundaries after the new census should know that this is unconstitutional, the way our vote was stolen in the 2018 elections was unprecedented. He added that the ECP had earlier stated that it could complete the new delimitation process in 90 days, implying that holding new elections after fresh delimitation. Javed Iqbal of Lahore district also submitted a petition to the EC, pointing out that without delimitation, his write of vote will be affected in the coming elections.